


Here and There

by Skullflower



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Adam Young Still Has Powers (Good Omens), Alternate Universe, Horror, Human Aziraphale (Good Omens), Lucid Dreaming, M/M, Maggots, March Flash Fiction, Nightmares, Not Beta Read, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Prompt Fill, Rating May Change, Trapped In Elevator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-26
Packaged: 2021-03-27 03:00:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30116148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skullflower/pseuds/Skullflower
Summary: Short prompt fills for March Flash Fiction.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Warlock Dowling & Adam Young
Comments: 9
Kudos: 13





	1. Inheritance

**Author's Note:**

> This will be a series of prompt fills for Kedreeva's March Flash Fiction. More information can be found here: [Link](https://kedreeva.tumblr.com/post/644550515761577984/march-flash-fiction-event)
> 
> I went a bit over the limit on this one.

The Pale Forest was considered to be the world's most cursed place, and with good reason. Its appearance alone was enough to provoke fear with its towering white-bark trees whose branches wove so tight that the sun never could pierce through. To step beyond the first high arches of enormous slick roots was to descend oneself into the thickest darkness broken only by glowing fungi and the eyes of beasts. If one dared to bring torchlight, there was then visible a world of otherworldly plant life that shimmered enticingly yet so often promised death to the hungry traveler.

It was a cold place. It was a silent place...and it dominated the world.

Humanity had waged war with the forest for as long as anyone could recall. Tales stretched back through countless generations of heroes that had cleared land where villages could thrive, and of the tragic souls lost to the encroaching vines reaching out to strangle the earth. The war continued with limited success. The trees were difficult to burn and the vines were aggressive and the unseen evils within were clever and sly.

"Your late mother blessed you with her eyes," Aziraphale's mentor would always whisper between lessons of hunting and wielding the fire-bleeding sword. She would look into his eyes in those moments - her own dark like nearly every other human's where his were the color of the sky. "Your blessing is your burden and the Forest your adversary. Never forget that you are the village's next protector, Aziraphale."

Uriel had said this to him so often to remind him because she knew better than anyone that he resented his inheritance. He resented hearing priests and priestesses speak of the eyes the gods had blessed to see the Hidden Ones, the evils of the Forest because to see meant to kill.

He was always a softer person at heart. As a child, he resisted his hunting lessons and balked at using a sword. He turned his 'blessed' eyes to the line of ivory trees that would some day be his home and his prison with its unknown terrors and only the fire of his sword to keep warm by. Aziraphale believed in the deepest parts of his soul that his end would be swift and merciless the moment he came of age and stepped within the dark embrace of the enemy.

As was more often the case than not, he learned that there was more to the dark than he could ever have known. There was plenty of truth to the fears surrounding the forest. The evil creatures that humanity spoke of did exist and it was true that the pale eyes he had inherited allowed him to gaze through their disguises and in doing so he discovered there was a strange beauty to behold in them. They were undoubtedly dangerous and yet...

The path to a little cottage nestled within a tangle of tall roots and low hanging branches was lined with glowing mushrooms and white flowers. He had traveled this path so many times through the many years, steady and certain, that the vines had lost the war and the ground was soft and worn. With persistence, the forest had parted in small places to allow a life to grow other than its own.

"Angel," called a voice from a far room within. Aziraphale doused the flame from his sword and lowered the bags and baskets heavy with supplies from the far-off village of his childhood. He had yet to lay eyes on his love but his lips already were easing into a smile at the thought of warm snake-like eyes and the long sharp-clawed fingers on scaled hands which would pull laces on his armor and gently tend to the wounds he acquired in the journey home - this treasured soul that his mother's eyes had enabled him to see.


	2. Take My Hand

The corridors were always the same. On either side were doors that would not open for his keycard and the carpet pattern was an eyesore of geometric shapes in beige, orange, and dark green that clashed with the mauve walls. The air was always cold and smelled of chlorine along with the cleaning fluid nearly every hotel used that would smell faintly of almonds. He had never been to this particular hotel, he was certain, and yet it resembled every hotel he had ever stepped foot in. His footsteps as he rushed down one corridor and the next carried the same muffled echo to match the dull thumping of his panic-stricken heart.

"Come on, come on, c'mon!" he whispered frantically as he shoved his keycard into the slot, only for the light to flash red. The distorted beep was prolonged and soon joined the chorus of refusal from all of the doors he tried next. To be deafened by this noise might have been a mercy against the harsh breathing and pounding footsteps of the thing that pursued him.

He tried the last door and then looked down at the end of the corridor to see a shadow sliding around the corner, bringing with it the putrid stench of decay and stagnant green waters.

Tears welled in his eyes. He did not know that he was dreaming but he knew he had been running for such a long time. He knew that when he rounded the next corner to the elevator lobby that he would be greeted with 'Out of Order' signs and labyrinth of more corridors. Still, he ran, because he had no other choice but to run. If he ever stopped, the monster would catch him.

' _You belong to us_ ,' the voice growled at him from somewhere behind him. Warlock never could see who it was when he looked over his shoulder, no matter how close the voice might have sounded. ' _It should have been you, not the other one. You'll pay for this._ '

Despite the futility that he knew awaited, he pounded on the button to the elevator. "Please!" he begged and, at last, the doors parted. Warlock's sobs filled the dimly-lit space that he had thrown himself into. Posters lined the dingy walls with words he could barely read due to the way they twisted and moved across the surface. Their unsettling nature did nothing to diminish his relief to finally - _finally_ \- achieve what he had perceived to be an escape.

And then, to his horror, the elevator stuttered to a halt. The rusted floor buckled and groaned while the walls began to drip with wriggling maggots. 

"Hurry!" a voice as young as his own called from above him. Warlock could barely hear it over his own screams but he could not ignore the light shining in from a hole ripped into the elevator ceiling. There, a small hand wiggled at the end of a stretched arm. "C'mon! Take it! Take my hand!" 

Warlock hesitated only for a second that felt like an eternity. The maggots were beginning to pool at his feet and that was enough to urge him onward, to reach out and grab on to the hand above him.

He did not realize he had squeezed his eyes shut until he noticed a change in the ambience. An earthy scent greeted his nose and the soft rustling of leaves replaced the growls and sirens. "It's alright, you can open your eyes now. We're somewhere _much_ better," said the boy that had saved Warlock's life.

They were of the same age, Warlock noted, and the boy was familiar to him. The curly hair and the bright eyes were those of a friend he had never known. "Do I know you?" he asked. "Wait..." He looked at the brightly lit woods around them. They stood within a clearing that was decorated by a children's fort. Toys were scattered about what appeared to be a makeshift throne and sitting upon it was a dog. 

"Yeah, kind of! We're dreaming, by the way," the boy said.

This detail gave Warlock pause. He knew the fact to be true but it took a moment to sink in. Once it did, suddenly everything about himself was more clear. His arms opened so that he could get the full picture of himself at the tender age of eleven. "I'm not actually a kid any more," he admitted and the other boy laughed. 

"Me neither! Weird, isn't it? Dunno why it's like this. Must be because they think you're more scared and easy to manipulate when you're a kid. My name's Adam, by the way. Always thought we'd be good friends but then your parents took you to America and we didn't get the chance."

 _Adam_. He knew that name, or at least he felt like he knew it the same way he knew this boy and didn't all at once. "What- I'm sorry. This is a lot to take in. What was all of that? Who is 'they'? How are we in the same dream? I have...like... a lot of questions, man."

Adam beamed at him and then pulled a pen from his pocket. "I've got a lot of answers. Don't worry. You won't forget this when you wake up. Here - phone me when you're up and we'll talk."

The dog on the throne lifted his head suddenly to bark. Just like that, Warlock sat up in his bed and stared down at his knees. "...Fucking Hell," he groaned into his palms. He was relieved that the nightmare was over and, at the same time, disappointed. The last part of the dream had been interesting. Unfortunately, that was all that it was. A dream.

He could not resist looking down at his arm where the Adam of his dreams had written down his number. Warlock's heart skipped. Written across his skin was the same number and a message. ' _Warlock, it's not a dream. The demon's name is Hastur. - Adam_ '


	3. Dreams, Nightmares, & Visions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next prompt actually had to do with dreams! I thought that I would make this a small continuation from the last chapter since it fit so well.

Adam Young dropped a bomb on Warlock's life. 

Well, no. That was not exactly true, was it? Adam Young had pulled Warlock from the debris of a bomb that nearly took him in the form of recurring nightmares sent from Hell. Literally. 

He had hesitated to make the call after he found the number and the message written on his arm. Making the call would make the dreams and the nightmares real and, despite a phase he went through in his youth that involved a lot of black clothing and ouija boards, he did not put a lot of stock in the supernatural, religion, or anything else he could not explain. If the 'boy' called Adam answered the phone then he faced a new reality.

Warlock made the call and the world changed for him. 

The ability to dream lucidly was constant afterward. Wandering through his dreams with Adam and discussing everything from the Apocalypse that had failed to the way their childhoods had differed helped him overcome the mother of existential crises. Adam's strange sense of humor in the face of the horrifying was another helpful tool to make his own. 

"I remember everything now," Warlock had said while the dreamscape shifted around them, from park scenery to a swirling galaxy one of them must have seen in a documentary. They had reached the part about the demon that was hunting him and the reason why. Naturally, that led Warlock down a different lane of memory that he had forgotten and left behind. "I had this nanny that told me I was going to rule the world. You should have heard the nursery rhymes she sang to me..." He trailed off. The dream resembled the garden outside of the manor from his childhood home in England. "And there was a gardener...You know what's weird? They came back as tutors. My parents never noticed, but I _did_. One time-"

He sat down at the desk that materialized. Warlock had spent many hours in that desk drawing unflattering pictures of Mister Cortese while Mister Harrison snored loudly during the lectures.

"Yeah," Adam said. "I know who you're talking about." He picked up a stick of chalk and tossed it from one hand to the other. "One of them tried to shoot me with a gun that looked like a tuba! But that was alright. They helped me out a bit in the end. Stopped time and everything! It was wicked."

Only Adam could admit a supernatural entity tried to murder him and talk about how cool it was in the same breath.

Not every dream was spent sharing the convoluted and bizarre aspects of their upbringing and entwined fate. They had fun, too, when they were not dodging Hastur or agents from 'the other side' as Adam put it. Warlock eventually figured out how to make himself appear the way he did in the waking world, which was a relief, because finding himself in old school uniforms was almost as bad as spotting toads during a nice dream. 

"Hey, Warlock?" Adam asked during a new dream close to a year after they had found each other. An entire year of doing this, of dodging enemies and making the sleeping world their playground, had finally become tense. There were more demons in the dreams of humanity and more angels than either could recall spotting. At first, there was only Hastur, but then there were more. Warlock saw the news in the waking world about the people locked in sleep, unable to wake despite the efforts of doctors and scientists everywhere. "Do you think you can help me find them?"

They were seated together in an empty movie theatre. The big screen was playing a memory that Adam wanted to share. Warlock watched Adam and his friends fight The Riders. He felt a pang of sympathy when Wensleydale's face filled the screen. He had been the most recent victim to the dream locking. Neither he nor Adam could pull him out of his dreams nor get his attention. He drifted through them, impervious to all attempts of rescue. Heaven and Hell were up to something and neither could figure out what that was.

He tore his gaze away from the screen to find Adam already looking at him. "Yeah. Of course."

Thirty years had passed since Warlock last saw the odd pair but there were threads that connected them, however faint. Memories had power and he used them to search for two entities that had seemed to have vanished from the earth. Adam's theory was that they were sleeping. He did not think that they would go through the trouble they had only to leave it all behind. The other alternative did not bear thinking of.

He was not surprised when the threads twined together to take him to the same place. In the darkness of sleep and dreams, a door appeared. Not just anyone could walk through it but Warlock and Adam had been at this long enough and he was polite enough to knock.

The thing that opened the door did not resemble anything Warlock had ever witnessed. There were wings, darker than the heart of a cave, and they all rolled and twitched against a coiling serpent with golden eyes filled with fire. A light too bright to look into directly shined behind it.

"Nanny? Brother Francis?" Warlock greeted. At last, he had found them. "It's time to wake up now."


End file.
